Friday, February 19, 2010

Translated, From the Conservative (Miranda edition)

I haven't seen anyone mention this, but it's probably worth pointing out something perhaps relevant about many of the conservatives who oppose reading terrorists their Miranda rights: for better or worse, many of them never actually liked the whole idea of Miranda rights in the first place, for anybody.  For traditional Reagan conservatives, "Miranda rights" are a criminal-coddling outrage perpetrated on the nation by permissive liberals and activist courts. 

Just saying...conservative complaints about Miranda rights and terrorists should probably be seen in that context.

2 comments:

  1. Slightly offtopic, but do you think that this is the case with many conservative positions, i.e. their stated reasons for taking a position are secondary to or completely different than their real reasons?

    Privatize social security = eliminate it. School vouchers to improve education = stop paying for other people's kids' education. Balanced budget = no taxes or social services.

    In other words, are many conservatives just libertarians that come up with less controversial rationalizations for their positions because they know their ideas aren't shared by a majority?

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  2. Oh, I think everyone spins. I don't know that I would say one party in general spins more than the other.

    I also think that different words mean different things to the parties, and that's not really dishonest in any way. The earlier item I did in this series was about how some liberals mistakenly thought that by "government takeover" conservatives meant the public option, when in fact that's not what they mean, at all. Now, whether it's legit or not to call Obama-style health care reform a "government takeover" is something that people could debate, but my point is that it's impossible to follow the debate if you don't know what the other side is talking about.

    I haven't come across any "translated, from the liberal" items yet, but I'll run them if I see them.

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